Search form

Sheryl Sandberg to Speak at HBS

4.12.12

The chief operating officer of Facebook,
Sheryl Sandberg ’91, M.B.A. ’95, will address Harvard Business School (HBS) graduates
as Class Day speaker on May 23, the school
has announced.

Since arriving from
rival Google in 2008, Facebook’s second-in-command has helped increase what was a base
of 70 million users to more than 750 million active "friends" today,
representing about 11 percent of the world's population, according to Forbes.
An outspoken advocate for women leaders, Sandberg—a mother of two—has recently
made headlines for voicing her opinions on work-life balance and the
difficulties women face trying to juggle motherhood with a high-powered job.

“There's no such thing as work-life balance. There's work,
and there's life, and there's no balance,” she said in
an interview for the Makers series from PBS and AOL. “I feel guilty when my
son says, 'Mommy, put down the BlackBerry, talk to me,' and that happens far too
much. I think all women feel guilty. I think what's interesting is I don't know
many men who feel guilty.”

Ranked
fifth on the Forbes list of “the world's 100 most powerful women” in 2011,
Sandberg—who oversees Facebook’s business operations, including sales,
marketing, business development, human resources, public policy, and
communications—has
been vocal about leaving the workplace by 5:30 each evening so she can have
dinner with her children, and sometimes working until late at night or very
early in the morning to prove that she is still giving it “her all.”

“I walk out of this office every day at 5:30 so I’m home for
dinner with my kids at 6:00, and interestingly, I’ve been doing that since I
had kids,” Sandberg said in her Makers video. ”I did that when
I was at Google, I did that here, and I would say it’s not until the last year,
two years that I’m brave enough to talk about it publicly. Now I certainly
wouldn’t lie, but I wasn’t running around giving speeches on it.”

In late 2007, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of
Facebook, met Sandberg at a Christmas party, and by February 2008, felt she
would be a “perfect fit” for his company. According to a profile in The New Yorker, Sandberg began work
at Facebook that March, asking questions and listening. “She walked up to
hundreds of people’s desks and interrupted them and said, ‘Hi, I’m Sheryl
Sandberg,’ ” recalls Chris Cox, the vice president of product, who sits next to
Zuckerberg. “It was this overt gesture, like, ‘OK, let your guard down. I’m not
going to hole up with Mark. I’m going to try and have a relationship with you
guys.’ ”

Prior to Facebook, Sandberg was vice president of global online
sales and operations at Google, and was instrumental in launching Google.org, the
company’s philanthropic arm. Before joining Google, she served as chief of staff for
the U.S. Treasury Department under President Clinton, helping lead its work on forgiving debt in the developing world.

Born in 1969 in Washington, D.C., Sandberg attended public
schools and excelled. She graduated from Harvard in 1991, earning the Williams Prize as the top student in economics; her mentor was future Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers. After graduation she was recruited as his research assistant at the World Bank,
where she worked on health projects in India, dealing with leprosy, AIDS, and
blindness. In 1995, she earned her M.B.A. from HBS with highest distinction.

“We will never close the achievement gap until we close the
ambition gap,” she said. “But if all young women start to lean in, we can
close the ambition gap right here, right now, if every single one of you leans
in. Leadership belongs to those who take it. Leadership starts with
you.”